Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [70]
Now the Civic slews across an open expanse towards a corner bound in by raised pavements and iron bollards, the Volvo still glued to its tail. We move in on its open flank. It cannot escape. Yet still the driver won't give up, aiming for a gap between the metal posts and mounting the pavement with an audible clang from the Honda's nearly naked wheels. The Volvo cannot follow – insufficient ground clearance. But the Omega, with its higher ride height and sump guard specified as a result of painful experience, can. We pursue the now decrepit Civic until its suspension finally collapses. In the time it takes me to climb through the rear door PCs Morrison and Pryde have pinned the culprit to the ground and handcuffed him. Car thieves have been known to be armed.
Calm, professional detachment has immediately asserted itself. I'm reeling from the sheer terror of it all, but the aftermath of the chase is deeply sobering. Someone's Civic LSi is completely trashed, two police cars are damaged, cooked brake pads and discs will all be replaced as a matter of course. It seems a destructive and expensive way of collaring someone who, the police would say, should have been banged up long ago anyway.
But I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that the experience has given me a ghoulish thrill. The whole issue of joyriding and police pursuit is heavily clouded with political and sociological arguments, but in the end nicking cars is nicking cars. And I have to say we got the bastard.
THE SMART CAR. NOT AFTER WE'D FINISHED WITH IT.
There must be more important things in life than the colour of your car, but anyone who has ever owned a brown one will know that, somehow, it matters.
I've had 15 cars in my motoring lifetime and seven of them, including the current one, have been dark blue. A psychologist friend tells me this is a good thing. He points to something called the 'achievement motive', which says that dark colours are preferred by people who are going places. You might imagine that go-ahead types are roaring around in yellow sports cars, but a little study of any merchant bank's car park or the spaces reserved for our captains of industry reveals that the real movers and shakers of this world are tooling around in sober-hued executive expresses. Bright-red Ferraris and mint-green Porsche 911s are obviously for playboys, tarts and wasters.
So I'm quite pleased to have a dark-blue Jaguar but sometimes I look at it out of the window and wish it was orange.
This wouldn't be a problem if I had an MCC Smart, because for between £450 and £700 you can have all the Smart's plastic body panels changed for something completely different. There is an official Smart centre within half a mile of my house and the job takes about 30 minutes, or less time than some haircuts. I could drop the car off, have the rug rethink and arrive home a new person. The Smart is the only car that allows you to do this.
The Top Gear staff have a Smart + Passion Cabrio and, predictably, within a few months of taking delivery they were bored with it being all black. They thought it would be a good idea if I drove it all the way back to Smartville, the factory in Sarreguemines on the French/German border, to effect an identity crisis.
The blokes down the pub didn't, reasoning that a Smart was inappropriate for a 960-mile round trip. But this is missing the point. If the Smart isn't usable as a normal car, then it will actually contribute to the very problem that it purports to help solve – that of urban mobility and parkability. A pure city car is a pointless idea, as it will require every owner to have another, proper car for long journeys. That means that for every Smart prowling the streets of London, Manchester and Edinburgh there would be another, full-size car parked by the road somewhere, which amounts to one-and-a-half cars where previously there was only one. Bad result.
So with a fruity rasp from the 54bhp three-pot, that staunch mucker Lensman Debois and I headed for the far side of France laden with 1,001 pieces of camera equipment and one spare